Beergun Questions

Alright Guru's of the Beergun, give me the quick 411 on the best way to use it.
Is it best to cool the bottles and keg prior to bottling?
Is it best to up the psi on the keg just a little before bottling?
I need a little insight before i start this process, and I know you guys have the wealth of knowledge I am looking for.

Pirate Ale said:

Alright Guru's of the Beergun, give me the quick 411 on the best way to use it.
Is it best to cool the bottles and keg prior to bottling?
Is it best to up the psi on the keg just a little before bottling?
I need a little insight before i start this process, and I know you guys have the wealth of knowledge I am looking for.

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Always chill the bottles before filling, keep the pressure on the keg (for dispensing with gun) as low as possible - you'll get less foam this way. The manual for the gun pretty much shows the best way to use it. Start off slow (low pressure), then up it a little if you can do so without too much foam.

If you figure out how to keep your beer carbed up after bottling it, pleae let me in on the secret. I never use mine anymore because of that. I've given out too many bottles of flat beer. Not worth the hassle.

Please don't tell me that Dude...
I am tired of not having carbed bottles to give out, but hate to prime and bottle a whole batch

Anyone else got Good results on the Blichmann that they can share.

I've had nothing but good results with my Beergun. I use it to bottle already carbed beer and to bottle beer that I am priming. Obviously bottling beer that is being primed is easy because there is no risk of foaming. Bottling carbed beer is a different story and requires some tweeking with the pressure to get the pour right. As stated, the bottles should be as cold as you can get them. The beer should also be cold. I reduce the pressure to about 3-5 psi and I get almost no foam during the bottling process. I have opened bottles filled by my Beergun more than six months later that were still perfectly carbonated and displayed no signs of oxidation.

Bottom line is I love mine and can't offer any explanation as to why some people have difficulties with theirs. I'm not saying that they are doing something wrong, I'm just saying that I have not experienced any of those problems myself.

I second John's comments in all respects except the 6 months but only because my bottled beer doesn't make it 6 months before it is consumed. : )

The first time I used mine I had a problem with the bottles not being carbed as expected. I recently bottled a 6 pack of my Ginger Peach Wheat for the beerswap and hopefully those recipients will comment on the carb levels when they try the beer.
I did chill the bottles this time which I didn't do the first time around. I think that might have been the trick.

kornkob said:

I second John's comments in all respects except the 6 months but only because my bottled beer doesn't make it 6 months before it is consumed. : )

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*rubs eyes, looks again*

Is that kornkob gracing us with his prescence?

: )


*crawls back into hole*

I was thinking the same thing, where have you been man? Seems like I haven't seen a post from our resident crazy uncle in at least 6 months!

Meh-- work. And house rennovations. And a brief trip to Maui.

On topic, and I have no idea if this has any impact at all--- when I am getting ready to bottle using the beer gun I get it all set up and then leave it in the fridge while I sanitize and chill the bottles I'm going to use. The gun and lines are then all the same temp as the beer when I fill them.

kornkob said:

Meh-- work. And house rennovations. And a brief trip to Maui.

On topic, and I have no idea if this has any impact at all--- when I am getting ready to bottle using the beer gun I get it all set up and then leave it in the fridge while I sanitize and chill the bottles I'm going to use. The gun and lines are then all the same temp as the beer when I fill them.

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That is an awesome idea! I mean, the thing we are trying to accomplish in using a Beergun in the first place is to have the beer experience the least amount of change in condtions as it travels from keg to bottle. Low pressure, 10' of line length and everything at the same temperature is the way to go.

Brewtopia said:

The first time I used mine I had a problem with the bottles not being carbed as expected. I recently bottled a 6 pack of my Ginger Peach Wheat for the beerswap and hopefully those recipients will comment on the carb levels when they try the beer.
I did chill the bottles this time which I didn't do the first time around. I think that might have been the trick.

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This has been a concern of mine, when bottling from the keg the kegged beer is normally cold and you pour into a cold bottle. My question--do you ship these bottles cold and if so how do you keep them cold. I always thought that once beer was cold you had to keep it cold.

MA_Brewer said:

Always chill the bottles before filling, keep the pressure on the keg (for dispensing with gun) as low as possible - you'll get less foam this way. The manual for the gun pretty much shows the best way to use it. Start off slow (low pressure), then up it a little if you can do so without too much foam.

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Well said! I love mine!

Dude said:

If you figure out how to keep your beer carbed up after bottling it, pleae let me in on the secret. I never use mine anymore because of that. I've given out too many bottles of flat beer. Not worth the hassle.

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I'll be completely honest...I had 4 of one sixer that lost its carbonation. I was very bummed out for sure, until I noticed I had used twist top bottles.

has anyone thought of using more than 10 feet of line? i've been contemplating that, and wondering if it would be worth it. on the one hand, it will reduce pressure more with more line, but then there is also the danger of the line warming, causing more co2 to come out of solution... i may give it a try next time to see if it works better with more line.

Flyin' Lion said:

This has been a concern of mine, when bottling from the keg the kegged beer is normally cold and you pour into a cold bottle. My question--do you ship these bottles cold and if so how do you keep them cold. I always thought that once beer was cold you had to keep it cold.

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I recall being told that once too. However, there is nothing inherient in the beer that 'reacts' to the chilling such that if you let it get warm again something bad happens (I've heard alternately that the beer will sour, go flat, get skunked and 'go bad'). Temp changes will have some imapct on the falvors over time but it's not anywhere near as bad as the 'everybody knows' rule that you can't let a chilled beer get warm and then rechill it. I've had enough cookouts where the beer got warm in the car on the way home and then been rechilled and served again later to know that this bit of 'common knowledge' is not anywhere near as extreme as people are led to believe.

Do you want to boil your beer and freeze it again? No. Is it best if you maintain it at a constant temp? Yes. If you chill a beer and then let it go up to room temp again then chill it is it going to taste horrible? Not likely.

Anyone here ever take non-carbed beer and bottle a 6'er (or two) with carb tabs and before kegging the rest? Seems like a lazy way to bottle a few for swaps, friends, etc.

As for hot/cold changing beer; I can attest that most BMC bought cold tastes worse after it's been warmed to room temp and re-chilled. So much so that I'm confident that I could spot it in a blind taste test.

pldoolittle said:

Anyone here ever take non-carbed beer and bottle a 6'er (or two) with carb tabs and before kegging the rest? Seems like a lazy way to bottle a few for swaps, friends...

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Yup! Sure have.

Do those carb tabs work well/provide consisantly carbed beer?

I've said it before, I'll say it again..."we no need no stinking beer guns..."

Anybody who gets my beer in a beerswap (that may or may not be in the works) can tell me how my carbonation was using this simple set up.

I'm still popping the tops off of some early (circa March) brews and that cloud of white CO2 in the neck is still a site to behold.

Great trick. I'm on it tomorrow.


Anyone wanna buy a counter pressure bottle filler used once?

Sea said:

Do those carb tabs work well/provide consisantly carbed beer?

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Yup! Sure do.

The only problem with the picnic tap trick is that you don't have access to quick CO2 flooding.

Bobby_M said:

The only problem with the picnic tap trick is that you don't have access to quick CO2 flooding.

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Hmm people always seem to bring this up but when we bottle normally from the bottling bucket we don't purge with CO2. Purging would be better but I don't think it's the end of the world, unless we're sitting around shaking the crap out of our bottles...or I could be (and usually am) wrong.

Biermuncher, do you think your device would work better (or easier) if it had a bottling cane valve thingymabob on the end of it? I've been thinking about it lately for when I bottle from the keg. Also how long is the line from the keg to the picnic tap? Cheers

denimglen said:

...Biermuncher, do you think your device would work better (or easier) if it had a bottling cane valve thingymabob on the end of it? I've been thinking about it lately for when I bottle from the keg. Also how long is the line from the keg to the picnic tap? Cheers

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The longer the hose the better. I use about 6' but you could go a bit longer. The same principal of resistance has to apply.

I'd thought about the bottling wand, but you don't really control the flow with the wand tip as much as with the stopper. That bottle will only fill about 2-3 inches until it stops due to pressure. Then it's a matter of using your thumb the squeeze the stopper to allow pressure to escape and the beer will start flowing gently, but steadily again.

I do this until what littel foam there is starts coming out at the stopper (that foam is my CO2 purge), close the picnic tap, move to the next bottle and repeat. I always set up 10-12 bottles in a shallow bucket so I can move from one to the next quickly. I can bottle a 12 pack in about 15 minutes, including capping.

As far as flood purging? Like I said, I'm still openning bottles from March that are perfect. I'm all for keeping things at their simplest level.

I suppose the CO2 purge is just a nice to have kinda feature. I'm sure a bit of CO2 comes out of solution and forces air out anyway. I know all the commercial bottling lines do it so they must have justified it somehow. Some lines put a single drop of liquid nitrogen in prior to filling.